Nine Christmas Derek and Casey spent together
by La-Drenaline
Summary: If you ask her why she fears so much the return of the older siblings, Nora will answer that’s not it – it’s Christmas break. Out of eight Christmas holidays since they departed to uni, they managed to almost give her an heart attack seven times." Dasey


**Nine Christmas Derek and Casey spent together**

**2015 - Prologue**

*********

Ellie enters the kitchen and Nora twitches nervously as her younger son settles in front of his plate. She dreads the days before the holidays, especially the ones when her two oldest (yes, she can't help considering Derek hers… And if you think she's a masochist... Well, you might be right.) are scheduled to return home, because the boy is just –

"When is she arriving?" Ellie asks.

- plain insupportable about it. Her eyelid makes that strange movement (she feels it) as she watches him wolfing down the spaghettis in two big mouthfuls. Sometimes it's glaringly obvious that he's a Venturi boy. But then he wipes his mouth thoroughly with his napkin, then folds it back neatly, and she _has_ to smile at the reminder that Casey and Lizzie are indeed his big sisters.

"Oh, for the love of whatever is holy, Ellie, are you gonna ask us every minute?" Marti groans as she enters the kitchen, letting herself fall into her chair. "'Cause I swear I'm gonna kill you, dismember you and bury the bits in the backyard if that's what you're gonna do."

She's late for lunch, as usual, but Nora can't reproach her for it, because working in a menagerie does have some inconvenient; the necessity of taking a shower after each shift being one. And she's happy enough with the fact that the teenager ignored Derek's advice about getting a part-time job and heeded Casey's.

"Mama!" Ellie whines. "She's threatening me!"

(He's fond of big words. Casey's influence.)

"Shut up, you big baby!" Marti retorts.

Nora sighs and rubs her temples tiredly. She should be getting paid for that.

"Marti, leave your brother alone," George interjects. "And Ellie, Casey won't be here before eight. You've been asking for a week, and we've been answering you each time. Asking again _won't_ make her arrive any faster. Though I wish it would," he adds under his breath.

Nora turns a grateful glance to him, to which he responds by blow-kissing her and Marti and Ellie find the time to make disgusted noises at the demonstration of affection in between the grimaces they're addressing each other.

She always wants to laugh when she watches the youngest of the fam, because (as much as Marti would protest), they're just so much alike. Especially with the whole older-sibling-crush thing.

"Nora, I know what you're thinking right now," the teenager says menacingly.

"I'm not thinking anything, Marti," Nora answers innocently.

"Like hell you aren't!" the youngest girl snorts. "You have that look on your face that would betray you even in the deepest dark. But let me tell you something, Nor; my old-sib-crush was never nowhere as bad as Ellie's is."

Of course she's right. In fact, Nora still thinks her son is a little too obsessive (in a fun, cute stalkerish way) about Casey, but it's just so amusing to provoke the teen.

"You say that as if you've gotten over it," she smiles.

"I have! It's been years since I have!" the girl protests.

"And yet you still call him Smerek."

"I do not!"

Nora lifts her eyebrows and Marti sputters in choked outrage.

"You listened to my phone calls!" the teenager is growing as red with embarrassment as the freshly dyed streaks in her hair.

"We did not listen so much as we were forced to hear them," George quips, looking frankly amused by all this. "You do have a tendency to get pretty loud in your complaining about your teachers. And to have quite a fool mouth, too," he adds, frowning.

"I still wonder how your dear Smerek would react if he knew you make regulars calls to Casey - of all people – to complain about boys," Nora smirks (something she swears she never did before meeting the Venturis).

"You won't tell him, right?" Marti asks, horrified.

"I'm still wondering what kind of color he would turn if we so much as hinted to the fact that you're having boys within a five-miles-radius of you," George adds (he may look cool with it, but he had two stepdaughters to train him, and besides, you should have seen him the first time Marti ever went on a date).

Marti looks slightly nauseous, so Nora decides to cut her some slack.

"Well, I suppose if he didn't learn about it during the years they shared a flat at Queen's, it's not now he will discover it," she says peacefully, and the teenager looks so relieved Nora almost breaks into a fit of laughter.

(She contains herself. Teenagers are susceptible little things, and prompt to anger.)

Edwin and Lizzie are scheduled to arrive at two, and they're actually ten minutes early. Nora is grateful the two of them goes to the same university, because she wouldn't have been reassured with the idea of Edwin driving from Toronto in his actual state of mind. The break-up with Jessie has been particularly ugly, and she can't blame him for taking it so bad.

(Hell, she had even thought they might marry one day. And she still thinks she was entitled to, because three years of relationship tend to nurse a mother's hopes.) (And yes, she knows Edwin isn't her son either. Son, stepson. Same difference.)

He kisses them all but excuses himself and disappears in his bedroom. Lizzie looks apologetic, and Nora can't say if it's because of his abrupt departure or because she can't do anything about it. Either way, it's not like Lizzie was responsible, so Nora smiles and shrugs it away.

"How is he taking it?" George asks, sitting besides his stepdaughter.

"Just as bad as one could expect," Liz answers. "I mean, I would be pretty mad if I discovered Eric had taken to sleeping again with the skank – I mean, Karin" she amends quickly when Nora frowns, "since a year."

George sighs.

"I tried to get him to talk to me but… he just won't."

"Well, I guess Casey's the better suited to talk to him," Marti says.

They all grimace at the remembrance of the whole Duncan fiasco – may he die in long and horrible sufferings.

Ellie demands to start a game of society soon after, so they gather round the table. As the hour of the dreaded arrival approaches, Nora tenses more and more and her ability to concentrate on the game quickly depletes.

If you ask her why she fears so much the return of the older siblings, Nora will answer that's not it – it's Christmas break. Out of eight Christmas holidays since they departed to uni, Derek and Casey managed to almost give her an heart attack seven times – and she has some doubts about what happened on the eighth. So she wonders what they have in store for her this year.

When the sound of a car pulling into the alley finally makes itself be heard, she's stringed enough that she feels she might snap up any moment. And Ellie's jumping up and down besides her at the excitement of finally seeing his adored Casey is not helping matters.

So she takes a deep breath and when George pats her back soothingly (he knows what she's stressed about – he's stressing about it too, except he's more discreet), she forces herself to relax.

And then Derek and Casey walk into the house, and Ellie runs toward them, ignore his brother outstretched arms (Nora really can't understand why Derek keeps bothering, but she thinks it has something to do with _being better than Casey at all cost_) and jumps at Casey's neck before she's had any time to put her luggage down. She drops it, and topples backwards, and almost falls, except that Derek catches her swiftly and another incident of Ellie-exuberant-enthusiasm-at-reuniting-with-Casey is averted (and when exactly did that become a routine?).

And Nora smiles because it's just so normal and her family is complete for Christmas and what more could she ask for?

So they all head towards the living room as Ellie tells Casey in great details about his week at school, even though she probably already knows everything about it since he called her two days ago, but it doesn't matter: she laughs into the right places and asks the good questions (and it's so easy to see how great a mother she would be, and the thought frightens Nora because she never wanted her little girl to grow up so _fast_).

Lizzie and Marti are discussing mistreatments of animals, one subject on which they have but one mind. Because Lizzie is still excessively pro-environment, and Marti just plain loves anything with fur, feathers or scales. Derek and George are discussing, and Nora just caught sight of Edwin descending the stairs and even if he stays aloof, it doesn't matter, because they're all _there_.

One hour later, Edwin and Casey have disappeared upstairs and the rest of them have all sat down for a poker (with chocolates for staking). Ellie is sulking because he's playing with Casey's husband, who's his least favorite person in the world since – well, the marriage; even though he insisted he understood all the rules. Probably better than the ape he's been paired up with.

"So, Derek," Nora asks casually, throwing three chocolates in the middle of the table. "I hope there's no surprise for us this year."

(She shouldn't try to fake casual. She never knew how to fake casual. Fake casual isn't a thing women from her family ever managed to achieve.)

"Why of course there is, Nora," Derek smirks, willfully misunderstanding her. "It's Christmas, what's Christmas without a good surprise?" He adds with mock-shock.

"You know what I meant," she retorts severely. "Casey and you have a tendency of bringing a whole new meaning to the word 'surprise'."

"I don't know what you would imply by that," Derek answers, swatting Ellie's hand away from the chocolates.

She scoffs.

"You mean you don't remember about The Famous Announcement of your relationship with Casey at Christmas 2010? That time you blurted it out in front of the whole extended family, in the middle of the dinner?" she says.

"Aw, how sweet, you titled it! The Famous Announcement, it does have a ring to it."

"There was the whole Yale Med School business in 2009 too," Marti mentions.

"Hey, I had no hand in that one!" Derek shoots back, raising his hands in defense.

"You were still hiding your relationship from us!" the teenager screeches (because really, what she means is that he was still hiding it from her).

"Or we could go back to 2007 and to The Great Moving. That was the less schocking, but not the less nerve-wracking," George says.

"There's also The Big Pregnancy Scare of 2012," Lizzie adds.

"Or The Crisis Almost Not Averted the year before," Marti says. "And you were the only one responsible for this one."

Derek opens his mouth to protest, but he's cut off by George:

"The Christmas You Wouldn't Have Spent Together, if you hadn't found a way to hurt yourself badly enough to end up in the ER that night? 2014."

"2013. The Biggest Error in Her Life," Ellie completes darkly.

There is a small silence.

"Jealous, squirt?" Derek smirks.

Ellie bits his brother's arm and Derek yelps in outraged pain.

"In fact, the only Christmas we didn't hear about you two was the 2008 one," Marti says thoughtfully.

Derek stops halfway through his trying to grab Ellie from his refuge under the table and looks suddenly very embarrassed.

"Yeah… You really don't want to hear about that one," he smiles nervously. "And I don't think Case would want me to tell you, either."

"Why not?" Lizzie asks, surprised.

They all turn to stare at him openly, Ellie even making a prudent venture to Nora's knees.

"Hm… She always had that thing about featuring pornography in front of the fam', especially the kind where the both of us star," Derek explains with a smirk.

(It's so obvious it's forced. Derek might be the Lord of Lies, but he never quite managed to overcome real panic. His eyes spell out "deer-caught-in-headlights".)

"Ew, Derek, _gross_!" Marti exclaims with a grimace.

And there, Nora has to agree with her. It's one thing to know your stepson and your daughter are in love with each other, as the Famous Announcement of 2010 left little doubt about (and she's had a hard enough time processing this). It was another to learn about their engagement two years ago; another to go through the marriage itself seven months later; but depicting them having sexual relations is where she draws the line.

"Well, I think we all got our point across," she says. "What _I_ want to be assured of is whether or not there will be another titled experience this year."

"Well, unless Casey has decided to divorce me and failed to inform me – no, squirt, that's not true, quit dreaming – no, I don't think so. She didn't tell me about anything that might surprise you, and as I don't have anything of that kind either, I guess it will be a surprise-free Christmas this year," Derek smiles.

The rest of the family draws a collective sigh of relief, but Nora feels her anxiety has only been slightly alleviated. She remembers quite well that in 2009, the only one not surprised had been the announcer.

*****

First LWD story ever, hope you liked it. This is obviously a multi-chapter, since I'll treat every christmas since the year they moved to Queen's. It's gonna be ten chapters long; one chapter for each Christmas from 2007 to 2014, and the prologue and the epilogue which both relate the 2015's one. The length of the chapters will probably greatly vary.

Some feedback perhaps? You know the review button is just begging you to hit it! (Yeah, the review button is a masochist, and he likes it.)


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